This invention relates to a cat litter mat.
In urban environments such as apartments and residential homes, trained felines, such as cats and like animals, deposit their waste in a litter box. Litter on which the animal waste is deposited is typically granulated absorbent material. In using the box the litter often becomes attached to the cat""s paws, and is dragged from the box and messily deposited on the floor in the home or apartment, and, if the occasion arises, sometimes even buried. Also, after use a cat often kicks the litter around in the box which can result in ejecting it onto the surrounding floor.
Mats or pads on which the cat steps on exiting the box are known. Their purpose is to dislodge litter from the cat""s paws as it walks across the mat to thereby avoid dragging it about the surrounding area. Some prior art mats have short, spike-like projections intended to enter and spread the soft pads on the underside of the cat""s paws to allow litter wedged between and on the pads to fall onto the mat before the cat reaches its edge. Cats paws, however, are quite sensitive and they dislike standing on rigid projections jabbing their paws with the result that the cat frequently shies away from using the liter box altogether.
It would be desirable to provide an animal liter mat more amenable to the liking of the animal using it.
Now, improvements have been made in animal litter mats which overcome shortcomings of the prior art.
Accordingly, a principal object of this invention is to provide an improved waste-containment mat for an animal such as a cat.
Other objects will in part be obvious and will in part appear from the following description and claims.
These and other objects are accomplished by providing a cat litter mat having flexible, paw-engaging projections formed of thermoplastic polyolefin elastomer. The projections are preferably formed of a thermoplastic polymeric blend of 20 to 90 preferably 35 to 65 wt. % polyolefin elastomer and 80 to 10% preferably 65 to 35 wt. % polyethylenexe2x80x94preferably low density polyethylene.